


Shake Off the Snow in Your Stride

by BeepGrandCherokeeper



Category: Detroit: Become Human (Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Alternate Universe - Politics, Alternate Universe - Royalty, Angst, Background Relationships, Gen, Inspired by Fanfiction, Introspection, King Niles, hankcon - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 01:47:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25961581
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BeepGrandCherokeeper/pseuds/BeepGrandCherokeeper
Summary: Niles wakes up sweating, still in the throes of some half-remembered dream—hands on his skin, dark eyes boring holes through his soul—and fists his fingers into the sheets.
Comments: 10
Kudos: 37





	Shake Off the Snow in Your Stride

**Author's Note:**

  * For [plutoandpersephone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutoandpersephone/gifts).
  * Inspired by [dieu et mon droit](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22308403) by [plutoandpersephone](https://archiveofourown.org/users/plutoandpersephone/pseuds/plutoandpersephone). 



> Based on @andpersephone's fic, _dieu et mon droit_ , specifically this chapter found [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/22308403/chapters/63005074). Please read before you read this for full context!
> 
> Basically I was possessed by the spirit of Niles feeling lonely and sad and had to shake it out via text. Oops.

It takes Niles a while to fall asleep. The bed is smaller than he’s used to, and of less fine quality, and then of course there’s the rocking to contend with. It lulls him into restfulness, swaying like the sea, but trains jerk and make noise in ways ships do not, so he snaps back to consciousness several times. He hears Connor’s breathing across the room, interspersed with little sighs like Connor is having trouble sleeping, too. Part of him wants to say something, to get up and… well, from there, he isn’t sure. They could talk—not like they had today, but honestly, earnestly, the way they might have done about inconsequential things as boys.

In the end he decides against it. He turns, closes his eyes, tries to clear his mind, and hopes that sleep takes him by surprise.

It does. Niles wakes up sweating, still in the throes of some half-remembered dream—hands on his skin, dark eyes boring holes through his soul—and fists his fingers into the sheets. Below him, the train makes its distinct clicking, chugging sound; outside, a sickly dawn precedes the eventual advent of the sun. It takes more digging than it should to reach his reservoirs of self-control, walking through steps to ground himself as he breathes heavily, eyes prickling. He feels ridiculous for this show of instability, even in private, caught so thoroughly off-guard when he hasn’t thought of that…

_Of him._

Not for ages.

There hasn’t been anyone since Niles ascended the throne. Too much at stake, he always tells himself, the weight of history and of his nation around his shoulders like a mantle. It would be selfish to drag anyone into his complicated, ritualistic world, churning currents beneath still waters. When he takes time for himself, which he does rarely, too tired or uninterested in the base pursuit of pleasure for its sake, he thinks of nothing and no one. Never of the man who had appeared in his dream, like a decade and more hadn’t already passed.

It’s too late, now. He’s tired, and unsettled, and the thoughts creep in and take root before he has the time to rip them out. They come back in pieces: flashes of fingers not so long as Niles’ with dark hair dusted over the knuckles, bruises in the shape of handprints on pale skin. The diplomat’s son had been a little older, and a little stronger, and his smiles were always easy and warm, so much the opposite of Niles’ inherent frost. Brown skin kissed by Italian summers, black hair that curled over his forehead and hung in his eyes when he bent over Niles to kiss his shoulders.

What Niles remembers best, after all this time, are the mornings after. He remembers the man waking before the sun came up, slapping Niles’ flank with an almost jocular finality, and rolling out of bed to smoke a cigarette. He remembers studying the man’s silhouette, drinking him in like Niles was a man drowning, and refusing to acknowledge that he had never come so close to love before.

He hadn’t come any closer. Not once, not with anyone, and normally he’s very good at telling himself it’s of no consequence.

Niles pries one hand up from the sheets and wipes at his forehead, dragging a hand through his hair, asking himself why the room is so abysmally warm. Perhaps he’s feverish, and that’s all this is, perhaps they will call off the rest of the trip and go home and he can pretend he never agreed to this fucking ridiculous notion. There’s too much room, out here. Too many wide open spaces, too many things he can’t immediately grasp. Too many things he can’t control.

Across the room, Connor makes a sound. Niles wonders if no time has passed at all, if the light is an illusion and it’s still the night before, and again he thinks of speaking up and reaching out.

“Hank,” he hears, this time, wafting across the room on Connor’s breath.

Niles feels himself tense, each muscle coiled like he’s ready to spring.

Connor’s bedsheets rustle as he moves, not a restless fervency but slow and simple. He speaks again, several mumbles lost to the air between them, and then Niles catches it again, clear and distinct, “ _Hank_.” The sound is soft, romantic, yearning.

It’s a name, Niles thinks, his gut twisting, that sounds very at home falling from Connor’s lips.

He should be angry. He should be outraged, actually. Connor is impulsive, sometimes, prone to thoughtless and even well intentioned selfishness, but this level of intimacy with the President of the United States is beyond the pale. And then there’s the sneaking around, the charged energy Niles had felt but not understood over Christmas, the button left undone at Hank’s barbecue, the bruise Niles caught a glimpse of as it faded on Connor’s neck. They’re begging for a scandal, an international incident of the kind that caused wars once and could do again.

But Niles isn’t angry. He can’t be. What he is, he realizes with a sinking shame, is miserable. The sensation claws to life in his chest, an ache that opens up beneath his heart and threatens to swallow him whole.

It hurts. It hurts like a physical thing, someone cracking his ribs apart and taking his throat in their hands and squeezing, someone lighting a fire behind his eyes making them burn with unshed tears. He feels hot with shame, still sweating. It isn’t right—setting aside everything else, the extenuating circumstances that slide out from under his exacting grip when he tries to hang onto them—it isn’t right that his brother’s freedom should wreck him this way. He shouldn’t be sick with this, twisting under the weight of one name, but he is; Niles thinks of his brother flowering under the hand of a charismatic, caring man, and the jealousy pours itself into his loneliness, acid in an open wound.

 _Why does he get to have that?_ he asks himself, aching for something—anything. For a hand on his skin, a body in the bed, his name in a lover’s mouth. _Why does he get to be loved, and I don’t?_

Niles knows the answer.

The grief steeped into his bones will dry out, he reminds himself, and in a few hours he won’t feel so flayed open and raw. In the morning, he’ll feel embarrassed by this emotional display, his tawdry one man show, and he’ll push it back down to the recesses of his mind. He’ll forget that he wanted, or pretend to, and settle back into his carefully crafted second skin. A king wants for nothing. It all will pass.

For now, though, in the early morning light, Niles rolls onto his side and faces the wall, eyes wide open against tears he refuses to let fall.

**Author's Note:**

> _Do you lie back and think of England?  
>  Do you lie back?  
> Do you lie back and think of England with fireworks flashing?  
> Do you lie back  
> Learn to feign your feelings_


End file.
